Thomas H. Benton has an excellent column in the Chronicle, which deftly combines jokes about dumb college students and reviews of books that are actually sitting on my filing cabinet.
Benton first speaks of the strain of anti-intellectualism in America.
As an English professor, I can attest to the power of that element in
American culture, as can just about anyone in any academic field
without direct, practical applications. When a stranger asks me what I
do, I usually just say, "I’m a teacher." The unfortunate follow-up
remarks — usually about political bias in the classroom and sham
apologies for their poor grammar meant to imply that I am a snob —
usually make me wish I had said, "I sell hydraulic couplers," an answer
more likely to produce hums of respectful incomprehension….For academics on the political left, the last eight years represent the
sleep of reason producing the monsters of our time: suburban
McMansions, gas-guzzling Hummers, pop evangelicalism, the triple-bacon
cheeseburger, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?, creation
science, waterboarding, environmental apocalypse, Miley Cyrus, and the
Iraq War — all presided over by that twice-elected, self-satisfied,
inarticulate avatar of American incuriosity and hubris: he who shall
not be named.
Several recent writers and academics have discussed how the Internet is making us dumber. There’s the Susan Jacoby book
Benton says that student’s skills have plummeted in recent years and the generational gap between faculty and students is cavernous. The computer can be blamed, but there are other causes, too.
Fantastic article.
Apt. 11d 